Originally Posted By: Omaha
I don't want to discourage your dream. In the wild, in my experience, they usually take over all sizes of BOWs.

Are you speaking from experience with L. osseus specifically? I'm hoping your negative experiences happened with a different gar species. blush

Originally Posted By: Omaha
You're theory is an interesting one though. Let's see more replies. I'm intrigued.

I've started diving into The LiteratureTM and actually made some encouraging finds:

Originally Posted By: "Food Habits, Sex Ratios, and Size of Longnose Gar in Southwestern Oklahoma" by Tyler et al 1994, pp 41-42
We collected 65 females and 73 males (0.9/1 female/male ratio), plus four gar of unknown sex. Thestomachs of 94 (66%) of these 142 gar contained no food. This high incidence of empty stomachs agrees withthe findings of Diana (7), who examined 1297 longnose gar stomachs in Florida, of which 70% were empty, andwith Scott (8), who examined 89 specimens in Indiana, and found that 56% of them had empty stomachs. Ourstudy indicates the species to be piscivorous. Of our 46 gar with non-empty stomachs, 98% contained fish, andonly 2% crayfish and insects. Crumpton (9), Goodyear (10), Netsch and Witt (11), and others have reportedsimilar results. Advanced digestion precluded prey species’ identification in most cases, but the following fishwere identified: two drum (Aplodinotus grunniens), sixgizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum), five red shiners(Cyprinella lutrensis), one bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus), and one black bullhead (Ictalurus melas).Preylength was 35-240 mm (mean: 105 mm). There was a trend for larger gar to feed on bigger prey. In our sample,69% of piscine prey were forage fish, 7% game/pan fish, and 24% fish remains. Similarly, Lagler and Hubbs(12), Diana (7), and Bonham (13) found that forage fish composed the primary diet of this species in other partsof the country. At Lake Texoma, May (2) found that the Mississippi silverside, Menidia audens, comprised 54%of the fish eaten by adult longnose gar. These findings hardly make the longnose gar a "predaceous fish that devours vast numbers of food and game fish" (4).


Originally Posted By: Fishes of West Virginia by Jay Stauffer et al 1995, p. 37
Longnose gar between 68 and 138 cm fed primarily on threadfin shad (Dorosoma petenense), gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum), bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus), silversides (Labidesthes spp.), white bass (Morone chrysops), and channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus, Seidensticker 1987).


Originally Posted By: Omaha
Also, just to throw another species into the conversation, are paddlefish legal in West Virginia? That's a fish with some history too.

Paddlefish are wonderful. I think they're illegal to keep if you catch them in the wild but I haven't been able evidence that it's illegal to stock them. Anyone more familiar with this kind of thing know for sure?